The United States called on Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah to seize opportunities for change following the killing of Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III
The United States called on Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah to seize opportunities for change following the killing of Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday.
"We'll see how things evolve," Austin said, when asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vow to keep fighting.
"But clearly there are opportunities for a change in direction, and we would hope that, you know, parties would would take advantage of that, both in Lebanon, in Gaza and in Lebanon."
The Israeli military said on Thursday that Sinwar, architect of last year's Hamas's cross-border assault on Israel, was killed in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
Austin also said that U.S. Forces in the Middle East stood ready to support Israel's defence.
Reporting by Phil Stewart, Sabine Siebold
Lebanon's caretaker prime minister on Friday made a rare rebuke to Iran and said Tehran's envoy should be summoned over reported comments by a senior Iranian official that it would be ready to help "negotiate" to implement a U.N. resolution on Lebanon.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz expressed strong discontent with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday, following Guterres’ lack of explicit support for the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, and his refusal to label Hamas a terrorist organization after the October 7th massacre.
The Israeli military identified what it called "a number of terrorists" crossing from Jordan into Israel south of the Dead Sea region and neutralized two of them after they opened fire on Israeli forces, the IDF said in a statement on Friday.
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